For a medium that is supposed to liberate us from silly, unfounded "absolutes", the internet culture seems to shake a new one out of its sleeves every three days, based upon hit count and viral ubiquity.

I never could really get into TED talks. Every time I saw one being hyped in the media or making the rounds of being shared on friends' FaceBook walls, it almost always turned out to be overhyping something to the point of making it pseudoscience.

I find them to be pretty hit or miss with a lot more of the latter. The one on Captcha and ReCaptcha is pretty informative and Ken Jenning's is entertaining but most of them seem to make their "point" in the first minute and then just fill the remaining time with nonsense and repetition.

Maybe in 2004 they were cutting-edge shiat, but these days they're just a way for the 1%ers to pretend they're being deep and thoughtful and paradigm-breaking. I do some design and printing work for a local VC firm that lurves them some TED Talks. They even put on their own TED Talk rip-off conference in the summer. It's about as intellectual as cellulose spray insulation.

As a rule, you should steer clear of any franchise that regularly involves Deepak Chopra being insightful.

bunner:For a medium that is supposed to liberate us from silly, unfounded "absolutes", the internet culture seems to shake a new one out of its sleeves every three days, based upon hit count and viral ubiquity.

TED is fine as infotainment. If you want talks that are more in depth but still not a college course, try 'Talks @ Google' or /r/lectures on Reddit. Also keep in mind that the quality control for TEDx events is much lower than for TED itself.

theorellior:As a rule, you should steer clear of any franchise that regularly involves Deepak Chopra being insightful.

God that man pisses me off.

Especially becuase I *KNOW* At some point someone has sat him down and explained "No, look. When a physicist uses the phrase 'observed' with regard to quantum mechanics, he doesn't mean it in the normal sense. He doesn't mean "A being looked or measured this in some way!" The physicist is using it as shorthand for "The universe interacted with this in, literally, ANY possible way.""

And he STUILL goes on with his bullshiat quantum woo and ARRRGGGHHH.

/PHYSICIST SMASH PUNY CON MAN.//PHYSICIST NO LIKE CORRUPTION OF SCIENCE

Palotta's consultant work, running events as for-profit fundraising campaigns for causes like AIDS research and cancer awareness, had problems when only a small percentage of the proceeds being raised were actually going to direct services. In one incidence, rather than a promised 60% of proceeds going to charity, the fundraising, advertising, and event costs cut into expectations so far that only 19% made it in the end. When too much money was being spent on marketing materials and large salaries for employees like Palotta, many of the larger fundraisers took offense and left to form a more formal tax exempt non-profit that ran similar events and paid their staff less overall.

Oh wow, what a scumbag. For contrast, organizations like the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders usually get around 90% of the proceeds going directly to the work they do.

About 50% aren't in a subject I'm interested in (so I play a few minutes and see if it's interesting despite the subject).Another 40% are in a subject I'm interested in ... but the speaker is just boring.

QU!RK1019:I've only watched a couple TED talks, and maybe I just had some bad luck, but I felt they were pretty lame.

Eh, they're just high-concept dicking around, and always have been. If you take them for what they are... basically an opportunity for people that are really excited about social sciences and technology talking about why they're excited... they're entertaining enough.

I'm... not really sure why this guy is so upset that talks entirely based around throwing ideas at the wall to see if anything sticks have a bunch of ideas that don't. That's sort of the point, it's basically a large-scale brainstorming session, not an actual practical meeting about real plans.

jonny_q:Every good Ted talk I ever saw was something that would have been interesting if it was about 4 times longer. There are some that are shiat. The rest are only long enough to get you interested.

I love to listen to a good speaker talk for a good solid hour. I don't care if it's a stand up comic or Neil deGrasse Tyson. Ted talks are too short to be useful in the event they happen to be good.

This.

But I think that was one of the original concepts. There was that "fact" going around a few years ago about how long the usual attention span was and that you could get all you needed or could remember in about 15 minutes. So these guys took this little Zig Zeigler thing, believed it, and decided to build an entire conference on the new amazeballs psedopsychology and monetize it.

It's great though for getting a good synopsis. But most listeners are happy enough to spout the cliff notes rather than doing real studying. Because the third party who is being preached to as they hear the talk second hand wouldn't be questioning anything about it anyway.

I'm guilty. I enjoy TED talks. If I'm in the kitchen cooking, or doing something and need something to listen to, I'll set up a TED talks playlist and get busy. I think I'm smart enough to filter the good stuff from the bullshiat, but ... what if I'm not? I one's an idiot, wouldn't they'd be the last to know?

Farkers, I need your help.

Music bores me ... the onion on my belt interferes with the reception. NPR ... only so much of that a person can take if it's not This American Life and Radio Lab is just farking annoying. If I'm doing something, and want to learn shiat, what's a good alternative to TED talks that isn't mind-rotting bullshiat garbage?

Take some classes on subjects that interest you, or that you feel you want to brush up on, on Coursera or other MOOC sites? The enthusiasm of the lecturers will vary, but there's not real penalty for dropping classes that just aren't doing it for you.

If you want to go for some biology stuff, I'll gladly recommend any of the following:- Introduction to Genetics and Evolution (Dr. Moore is great!)- Useful Genetics I & II (Rosie Redfield runs this; it's challenging but really well done)- Epigenetic Control of Gene Expression (Really interesting, but probably super tough if you don't have some genetics background)- Dinosaur Paleobiology (nice, and you can set your own schedule as all video lectures are available from the start)- Human Evolution: Past and Future (Run by John Hawks; I actually dropped this because I have too much on my plate at the moment, but I full intend to take the next session)- Marine Megafauna (worth looking into if you are interested in Marine Biology)

If you are interested in other topics, there are plenty of other things to learn about, as well. :)

How is it that a group promulgating the spread of ideas and knowledge incapable of providing captions for the deaf and the hearing impaired? How about a transcript? This is not rocket science, supergeniuses.